Why most magazines still don’t get the internet
Earlier this week I read this synopsis of a Columbia Journalism Review study on magazines and their online presence. It doesn’t look good.
Magazine publishers and editors know that the web is important. They’re losing readers and attention to blogs, social media and probably even chatroulette. But instead of getting smart, adapting, changing and putting out a great product online most magazines limp along and still don’t get it. A few reasons why:
1) They’re still not finding the right people
Most websites were staffed by people who primarily worked on the print editions, and less than a quarter of staff [ed. I think she means a third, here] were hired with web experience (29 per cent).
Hiring people with web experience probably isn’t the easiest thing to do. Many publishing and journalism programs aren’t too sure how to teach these skills and they change so fast that what you learn might be out of date by the time you graduate.
But not hiring dedicated web staff is just foolish. Downloading extra web responsibilities to staffers who can’t dedicate their attention to it, or see it as a second priority, because undoubtedly the print product always comes first, will mean an inferior product.
2) More traffic equals more revenue
The study points out that most sites are still making cash off ads so it’s pretty easy to see why the sites with more traffic are the ones that are likely profitable.
And if advertising (and traffic) is the lifeblood of your site it makes these next facts particularly gobsmacking.
Roughly half of magazines surveyed use metrics to guide content decisions (47 per cent), but only 8 per cent closely monitor and rely on them.
Less than half use traffic statistics (43 per cent), and those that do so regularly for content decisions are significantly more likely to be profitable.
Eight per cent! If magazines paid this little attention to print circulation and market patterns they’d be out of business a long time ago. This isn’t an inability to adapt, this is just neglect pure and simple.
March 19th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Quite possibly this could be summarized as “Print people do not understand computers.”